The invention relates to a device and to a method for cooling electronic components and for supplying power to the electronic components via the same module.
Computer systems comprise a plurality of single printed circuit boards (PCB) which may be arranged on a common backplane. Such PCBs may comprise different components like processors, memories or power converters. The PCBs comprising the components may also be called modules and may be processor modules, power converter modules or I/O modules, for example. Increasing the computational power, memory bandwidth and capacity or I/O bandwidth of such computer systems may result in an increase of the power consumption of the single modules. Such an increase of power consumption may lead to an increase of energy to be supplied to the system and distributed within the system to the single modules. However, this leads to an increase of heat in the modules, which heat needs to be removed.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 7,133,287 A1 shows an integrated heat sink and core power distribution mechanism. First and second power rails are disposed on opposite sides of one of more integrated circuits on a printed circuit board (PCB). The power rails are electrically coupled to a power supply and the integrated circuits. At the same time, the power rails are used to thermally couple one or more heat sinks to the integrated circuit(s).
Further, US 20120106074 A1 or U.S. Pat. No. 6,801,431 A1 disclose arrangements for dissipating heat and for supplying power via separate elements.
However, in order to remove or dissipate the increasing heat from modules, there is a need for an improved dissipation of heat and for a supply of power at the same time via the same elements.